Sara Copia Sullam

Who was Sara Copia Sullam?

Sara Copia Sullam was an Italian poet and writer who lived in Italy in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. She was Jewish and very well educated. Despite being married, for many years she had what appears to have been an extremely close relationship, by correspondence only, with a writer, Ansaldo Cebà, who she admired but whom she never actually met. He was a Christian, and at that point in his life he had become a monk. He appears to have fallen in love with Sara, and constantly urged her to convert to Christianity, but she resisted.

In 1621, Sara was accused of a serious crime of belief, a heresy, and was in danger of trial by Inquisition. She received almost no support from many of her friends, including Cebà. She died of natural causes in 1641. Of her writings, a number of her sonnets and her Manifesto are all that have survived to the present day.